Current Reading - Books best thread

[Gerontophile]

Current Reading - Books best thread

'The Taste of Too Much' by Clifford Hanley.

My favourite book. Re-read it recently, and imploded. Growing-up has never been worse, nor better.

"Our Country's Battles", is , I hope, a fantastic mention about Mexico 1968. And different from TToTM, in that it is self-involved, but explodes, with massive choices, and you pick your own.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Almost finished The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman. He of Boxer Beetle, which I was turned on to here. He could write a how-to manual and it would be fun, witty and interesting. A very good second book (longlisted for last year's MB prize) and at only 28. The cunt.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Bored of Education wrote:

Then it'll be David Peace's new book, Red or Dead, doing for Bill Shankly what he did for Brian Clough. Will be interested to see how that fares.

I've just put that down and I shan't be picking it up again. Peace just hammers away through repetition, in a sort of inverse Ellroyist expansion - instead of paring down he inflates the wordcount until its impossible not to skim read. I was up for 'Tokyo Year Zero' next, but now I'm not so sure.

He was on Radio 4 discussing the repetition but, I have to admit, his explanation didn't make any sense to me. I have put it on my wish list anyway.

But I really enjoyed 'Tokyo Year Zero' after getting into it.

[alyxandr]

Current Reading - Books best thread

This weekend's finds from the Friends of the Library Booksale:

Robert Lawrence Balzer, The Pleasures of WINE_[sic], 1964. The story of the biggest names behind the very best of California wine. Names like Almaden and, er, Inglenook.

George & Rights, The Moveable Fleet: A Boatwatcher's Guide to San Francisco Bay, 1979. Should i come to annoy you all with tales of Boatspotting in later life, it all started here.

Florence Brobeck, Chafing dish cookery, 1950.

...table cookery today is almost a necessity in maidless homes... Make this for Teen-Agers while they are dancing to the radio

And i don't even own a chafing-dish; hopefully, obtaining one at a garage sale or thrift store will preserve my proletarian street-cred.

H.V. Morton, A Traveller in Southern Italy, 1969. A big fan of I Saw Two Englands in particular, and conviviality-porn in general; have high hopes for this one.

Total expenditure: $10

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Since The Teleportation Accident, I've also been prompted by the thread in Film to re-read In The Heart of The Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (from the point of the sinking onward). What a story.

I've also finished Clockwork Angels, the steampunkish novel based on the most recent Rush album. A quick and fun read.

Now just into Between Man and Beast by Monte Reel. Couldn't tell you much yet, but it's my sort of thing.

[Land Waster]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Really enjoying 'Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln'.

It's supposedly the 'book that inspired Barrack Obama', but I didn't let that put me off.

Honest Abe was one hell of a canny operator, and it's been fascinating to read about his rise from the backwoods to the White House.

Very sad, though. So many wives and children dying young is a poignant reminder that there was often little that was romantic about life in the 19th century.

[Edie St Pierre]

Current Reading - Books best thread

'The Beetle: A Mystery' by Richard Marsh. Really glad I happened across this one. First published in 1897, the same year 'Dracula' was first published. Stoker and Marsh were friends and had a bet on which of the two novels was going to sell the most. Oddly enough, Marsh won initially, his book was a huge seller at the turn of the century. There's lots of classic fin de siècle stuff going on, nasty debauchary, dodgy characters, mysticism, imperial angst, a kind of mounting hysteria. It's got a really strong narrative drive too, if you like this kind of thing obviously. It's only recently come back into print, after being unavailable since the 50's. Worth a punt.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Thanks Matt - that's free on Project Gutenberg, going to check it out.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Recent reading:

Yeah Yeah Yeah by Bob Stanley. Enlightening but occasionally exhausting history of pop. Not too dense, not dry at all (some magnificent footnotes), occasionally opinionated (he really doesn't think much of Patti Smith) and best digested in small chunks to take in the scope of it.

Equilateral by Ken Kalfus. Elegantly written novel about an obsessed Victorian academic overseeing the construction of a vast triangle in North Africa to signal Martians that there's intelligent life on earth. It has a grand feel but still seemed oddly directionless to me - I finished it not sure how I was supposed to feel.

Next up:

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell.

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just went through a whole raft of sports books, the best of which were 'We Were Young and Carefree' by Laurent Fignon - an extremely honest and brutal account of cycling from a man that will be missed - and 'Friday Night Lights' by H.G. Bissinger, the saddest book I've read about sport - except it's not really about sport.

Next up - 'Pig Iron' by Ben Myers and 'Last Train to Istanbul' by Ayse Kulin.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Reading: Modernity Britain, 1957-59. Another volume of Kynaston's social/political history. It's starting to feel a bit rote - lists, tenuous connections between dates, more chapters on architects vs town planners vs sociologists. I can't help but feel there's a superb single volume book buried somewhere across all of these individual books.

Next: Concretopia, John Grindrod. A travelogue/history of social and private housing since the war. Looks a bit more chummy and accessible, more pictures and anecdotes, but I'm still wondering why I chose that to follow on from Kynaston. It was only £1.50 on sale today though.

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Recently finished Anna Karenina. Truly amazing and I regret not reading it until now. I don't understand why it has the title it does. The book is as much about Levin as Anna or is that just me identifying with Levin (to an extent) more than Anna? Was Tolstoy's spirituality seen as being a bit odd at the time? You can see glimpses of his future in Levin's epiphany can't you?

I've just finished Waltenberg by Hedi Kaddour. It won the Prix Goncourt for first novel in 2005 and absolutely drew me in. It is ostensibly a spy novel covering the short 20th century but I do feel sorry for the Amazon reviewer who was expecting a Alan Furst style thriller. It is much more a novel of ideas. The main characters are a French journalist and a German novelist who meet during the first world war and a East German spy master (survivor of the Holocaust and the Gulags) and his French mole who meet up occasionally in the town of Waltenberg.

The book begins with a description of a French cavalry charge in 1914 and two meetings in 1956 between Lilstein and the novelist who wants to defect to the East and the first meeting between the mole and his potential handler. From there it moves across the century showing more of the characters and introducing others. A lot of it is internal monologue as people think about the past and future with digressions to other times. To be honest not much happens, its mostly conversation and memory but it tells a brilliant story.

I don't think I've sold it very well but I would recommend it in a heartbeat.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just getting into Lars Iyer's Dogma - pleasantly surprised to find a novel published this century (I can only think of one or two others) that I really like. So far.

[hobbes]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I haven't read a book for months.
I've not been on my own for months.
Nine months, in fact.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I enjoyed Dogma, but the second and third books far less so. The humour and style didn't really develop from the first book.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

hobbes wrote: I haven't read a book for months.
I've not been on my own for months.
Nine months, in fact.

Keep this in mind at all times: with kids, just when you think you've reached your limit and can't take something any more, it mysteriously ends. The sleepless nights, the carrying them around, the chronic ear infections, the bum-wiping, the tantrums, all of it. It's the oddest thing.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Hmm. 2 years in and I still manage to get 30 minutes - 2 hours a night reading while I settle the little one...

...but yes, it does get easier. They seem to know when they're pushing you to a limit and give something in return.

[hobbes]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Keep this in mind at all times: with kids, just when you think you've reached your limit and can't take something any more, it mysteriously ends. The sleepless nights, the carrying them around, the chronic ear infections, the bum-wiping, the tantrums, all of it. It's the oddest thing.

Oh he sleeps wonderfully. He always has. He's an incredibly sweet natured little boy so far. When I put him to bed he's asleep in 30 seconds with no fuss. He loves bed.
It's just with work, playing with him, putting him to bed, gym, then making dinner it's almost bedtime by the time I've finished. I need a good couple of hours to get into a book, which I just don't have.
In fact because I try to give Pamela a break as often as I can, I actually never get any time on my own at all.

[beak]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I just got done with Platform by Michel Houellebecq. Whilst I've enjoyed his other stuff, and was looking forward (perhaps the wrong term) to read his take on sex tourism, it just.. wasn't that great. Couple of fantastic laugh out loud lines, and that same old neurotic disquiet I get reading his take on society, but the second half of it seemed incredibly rushed, and the general framework of the plot has been done better in his other books.

[Sexual Chocolate]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Recently read Hemingway's In Our Time which had a few decent stories in there.

Just finished re-reading Vintage Amis. Of course it's excellent but I'd love to know what happened to Martin Amis to make him despise the working classes. If he gives another lecture in SF perhaps this time I'll attend and ask him.

Currently reading Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square. First of his I've read. Good so far but not sure I like his style. Still, enough intrigue to keep me reading, and he's supposed to be great, according to authors I respect.

[Kettle]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've only just downloaded Kobo onto my phone, so looked at the freebies they were offering.

So downloaded a few classics - and the first I've started reading is Around The World In 80 Days. Not sure already knowing the story really makes a difference to the enjoyment of the book. The language Verne uses gives the story the gentrified feel the story deserves.

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've read a couple of things to suggest that those original translations of Verne aren't very accurate.

For example

Edit: Some samples of different translations

Not that the one you have is necessarily bad but some seem to be wilfully terrible.

[Giggler]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I got Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop by Bob Stanley and The Beatles: Tune In by Mark Lewisohn from my colleagues for my birthday today. Looking forward to getting my teeth into them.

[beak]

Current Reading - Books best thread

In a blaze of being late for work and inept decision-making, I have picked up The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea off the big pile of books given to me by a friend who was moving house.

Kind of interesting, but discomfiting in its blind mammon-worship.

Anyway, my to-read pile now spans across two shelves and I'm having a hard time picking the right thing for the general times/places of my life. I think I might have to type up a list of what's on there and ask the good folks of OTF for some guidance (after all, I like the Books forum but don't spend enough time here..)

[Toby Gymshorts]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Having finally joined the digital reading revolution, courtesy of the reader app on my Nexus, I spent an entertaining hour or two browsing through the Project Gutenberg archive and downloaded the following:

The Divine Comedy - Dante
The Great God Pan and The House of Souls - Arthur Machen
The King in Yellow - Robert W Chambers
Volumes 1 and 2 of the Works of Edgar Allen Poe

I'll probably never get around to reading them, but it's nice to know they're there.