Current Reading - Books best thread

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Episode 659 of Marc Maron's podcast (WTF) has a good interview with Nesteroff. The man's a walking encyclopedia of comedy history. It's still available for free listening if you hurry.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished All For Nothing. Brilliant. The characters are fantastically drawn, all fully human with their faults and positives, and that really keeps it going through the fact that (in my opinion) a significant number of them are either pretty unpleasant or a bit stupid. The author, Kempowski, prefers not to comment either way; the characters are presented without judgement.

The main family, through their own isolation and aloofness, are also unaware of a lot of the wider political context of the war, but he manages to do this without going overboard with the idea of the good German. There is, simultaneously, a lightness of touch and a focus on small details which makes it all even more real.

Next, I'll be starting The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.

[via vicaria]

Current Reading - Books best thread

A couple of recent finishes.

East of the West by Miroslav Penkov is a collection of short stories, based around a number of characters in Bulgaria. Like Kapka Kassabova's book I read a couple of months ago, they feature heavy references to Bulgaria's history and nationalism, but also a fair amount of farce and absurdity. It's a good mix, and while many of the characters aren't necessarily sympathetic, it's very engaging and frequently moving. Penkov (like Kassabova) balances the pettiness of a relatively small nation's nationalism against the genuine weight of its history very well too. Basically between them they've started to hook me into the idea of a trip to Bulgaria at some point.

The second book recently finished is The Accursed Mountains by Robert Carver, a travelogue of sorts about his mid-1990s travels in Albania (a year or two prior to the 1997 pyramid schemes collapse). While the subject is really fascinating, the author is - in no exaggerated terms - an absolute twat. The worst kind of unreconstructed Empire-era public schoolboy (there are regular references made using Raj-era terms) with regalar polemics about how under the Empire colonies flourished, while under independence they just want us to send them money because they don't want to work. He includes Albania in this, and regularly tells Albanians to their faces that they are lazy, corrupt and unwilling to try.

He also happens to be a bit of a creep, describing any attractive female nearby in graphic terms (describing one Albanian translator's breasts as deserving recognition as national monuments in their own right, then fantasising about her later on).

It's irritating because it's a very interesting book, and he writes well when not on a rant. There's undoubtedly poetic licence being taken in numerous places, but all the same it's worth a read, as long as you can ignore the author's worst excesses when they crop up.

(I checked reviews of the book after I'd read it, and this opinion about Carver seems to be widely held, so I was relieved it wasn't just me)

[Chin Music]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Three slim books I've just read, all selected from the slim pickings of my local library.

The Flaneur - Edmund White

I had never heard of either the writer or book, I picked it as I generally like the idea of idle wandering, or 'the flaneur'.
Interesting and distracting enough, but it felt more like a magazine article than a book, it is a sort of pyschogeography light book about Paris.
Perhaps the sign of a lightness of touch, but I doubt any of the stories or information will remain in my mind for long.

The Embassy of Cambodia - Zadie Smith

I haven't bought this because it is a bit of a cheek to charge £7.99 for a short story, no matter how nicely designed the cover may be. Yet I would buy it for the cover alone, but the story is worth reading too. Well drawn characters that create interest and sympathy, poignant and funny moments together with raising grander questions, feels like an achievement in such a short story. No departure in style for Zadie Smith, but I happen to enjoy her previous novels, despite some flaws.

A Spy in the House of Love - Anais Nin
Again, I'd never encountered title or name before, but I trusted the Penguin Modern Classics branding.
Seemed like pretentious twaddle to me although I did feel like reading it again just as I finished, with a bit more attention. I just drifted off with all the dreamy, overly poetic prose.
Am I missing something, should I read a different work of hers, or can she only be appreciated within the context of when it was published?
Tell me what to think, educated masses.

Off to read H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald now.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Sticking true to my statement above that there's nothing wrong with reading kids' books, I have just finished The Fault In Our Stars and on googling a few reviews discover it's classed as a Young Adult book by publishers and reviewers. Makes sense, I suppose - it's narrated by a young adult, is about two teenagers falling in love and dealing with loss and so on.

Anyway, it's yet another of this run of books I've had this year which are relatively recent and very good. It tugs at the heartstrings and raises a chuckle in more or less equal measure. Recommended.

Next up after a succession of manageable-length books, a deep breath and into Marlon James' A Brief History Of Seven Killings, the first really thick novel I've tried to read on my Kindle since Mary Shelley's The Last Man, which took me fucking ages.

[hawkvshandsaw]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading School of Arts by Mark Doty, his fifth collection, having read everything else he's written. It's some of his most daring work, as he was married to an experimental novelist at the time, and the book written two years later, after their divorce, is even darker in the light of the hope expressed in this one. Probably my favourite living American poet.

[Chin Music]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished H for Hawk, and I was mildly disappointed by it.
I don't know if one would enjoy it more, or less, having not read T E White's Goshawk. I have, and I found the passages on White interesting, but it left me feeling there wasn't much to the Helen side of the story.
She deals with the grief of losing her Dad through the training of a Goshawk, and there's some great passages on her feelings as well as descriptions, or ponderings, of the English countryside. Yet overall, I felt she didn't actually reveal that much about herself. Fair enough, she sounds like the type of person who wouldn't revel in revealing everything, but I wonder if it is this that left me with the feeling of something missing from the pages.

Also just finished The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. I was expecting a more violent critique of Thatcherism, but I'm sure it was a better book for being more subtle than that. I enjoyed the story and most of the characters are well drawn and convincing, but it does suffer from none of them being that likeable.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

On holiday I read and enjoyed Andrew Hurley's The Loney, a beautifully written and utterly grim horror/thriller about a religious retreat in the 1970s on the Lancashire coast.

Followed it up with Strange Tide, the less nourishing 13th entry in Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May series (aging London detectives investigate mysterious murders while bemoaning the loss of the capital's character and history). Always well-paced and enjoyable, but starting to feel a bit formulaic.

Lastly, I'm currently ploughing slowly towards the end of Robert Service's The End of the Cold War 1985-1991. It's lucid, clearly written and gives a real sense of the momentous changes that happened in East/West relations, and of how vital the personalities involved were (and it's surprisingly gentle on Reagan). But dear god it's dry; nothing on the social impact of the changes, and while the subject is fascinating the style (Shevardnadze said this then Gorbachev said that then Yakovlev said the next thing) makes me think Service must have spent years distilling and rephrasing meeting minutes.

[kokamoa]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Have been on a good run of books lately, in that all of the last 5 that I've read have wowed me in their different ways. Brief summaries:

Clive James - North Face of Soho - I make better sense to myself when I read a Clive James memoir.

Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro - manages to make a seemingly unlikeable character thoroughly human. Brilliantly written and poetic but rooted in the everyday which stops it ever losing the reader.

Alan Coren - Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks - edited by his children - when he was on form, which was at least 90% of the time, he was one of the finest parody writers this country has ever produced. But I prefer him talking about himself and his life.

Will Self - Shark - a tightrope walk of a novel but one that he pulls off brilliantly. Didn't realise it was part of a trilogy so Umbrella is next on my to buy list.

Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club - always thought the film was great but the source material is incendiary.

Currently reading The Establishment and How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones - the rage is already building after 80 odd pages.

[ale]

Current Reading - Books best thread

kokamoa wrote: Have been on a good run of books lately, in that all of the last 5 that I've read have wowed me in their different ways. Brief summaries:

Clive James - North Face of Soho - I make better sense to myself when I read a Clive James memoir.

Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro - manages to make a seemingly unlikeable character thoroughly human. Brilliantly written and poetic but rooted in the everyday which stops it ever losing the reader.

Alan Coren - Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks - edited by his children - when he was on form, which was at least 90% of the time, he was one of the finest parody writers this country has ever produced. But I prefer him talking about himself and his life.

Will Self - Shark - a tightrope walk of a novel but one that he pulls off brilliantly. Didn't realise it was part of a trilogy so Umbrella is next on my to buy list.

Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club - always thought the film was great but the source material is incendiary.

Currently reading The Establishment and How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones - the rage is already building after 80 odd pages.

Yeh the Owen Jones one...doesnt offer a lot in the way of stuff you hadnt already grasped by way of loose thoughts...but it articulates and lays bare such thoughts in a cohesive narrative that is way beyond admirable...essential reading that should be made compulsory yet the worst thing is how the early rage eventually gets subsumed into a dispiriting stupor that we're all being suckered and theres sweet FA we can do about it...the author does his best to come up with alternatives at the end but such as been the barrage throughout only a sense of shell shock remains for the reader...

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I accidentally bought Francis ("Red Plenty") Spufford's first foray into fiction, "Golden Hill". I'm about halfway through and it's great, like an earthier "Ten Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet". It's about a stranger arriving in Manhattan in 1746 with an order for more money than anyone on the island has ever seen, and no explanation. Evocative, bawdy, richly written.

[Gerontophile]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just started "The Girl in the Spider's Web" which for those who don't know, is the continuation of the Steig Larsson series 'Dragon Tattoo'.

I am only at page 60, but it seems a lot easier to read than the others, much as I liked them.

*by David Lagencrantz.

[imp]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm back on the Ferrante thing - book three of the Neapolitan quartet. And though I'm devouring it just as I did the first two books, I'm feeling the first tugs of irritation at the narrator. Maybe this is intentional on the author's part.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I found the third book least interesting because it's mostly not set in Naples. The fourth book is not irritating, but the spine of the plot is preposterous, as we can discuss when you get there.

[Diable Rouge]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Currently going through A Little Life, and can truthfully say that it is undoubtedly the bleakest book I've ever read. So far, our hero has been orphaned, physically abused, sexually abused, used as a child prostitute, been run over by a car, self-mutilated, attempted suicide, been the subject of domestic violence, had his legs amputated, and has seen his partner killed in a car crash. So, apologies for being somewhat cranky in today's posts.

[Tony C]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm now reading Eduardo Galeano's ' Open Veins of Latin America' and very much enjoying it.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

A classic, but remember Galeano repudiated much of it before he died

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Currently reading Lionel Shriver's "The Mandibles". It's utter shite. Do not waste your money.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished To Have and Have Not. Hemingway. Flawed and uneven, but marvelous. A great quick read.

[Snake Plissken]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished Maus. Not exactly an enjoyable read, but definitely an essential one.

A couple of images have definitely burned themselves into my brain.

[Jah Womble]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Having read most of Martin Amis's novels, I kind of figured I hadn't read enough of his father's work, so currently reading Girl, 20.

Painfully middle-class, but highly amusing.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Snake Plissken wrote: Just finished Maus. Not exactly an enjoyable read, but definitely an essential one.

Agree completely. Immensely powerful.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Sam wrote: About a hundred pages into All The Light We Cannot See now, and it's very good indeed. There are two storylines told in alternating chapters which follow two people through the second World War - one a blind French girl, the other a German boy recruited into the army. I like the writing, I like the scope of it and so far I'm enjoying the story.

I'm in roughly the same spot now and you're bang on. Not sure how it's going to turn out, but it's hooked me. I really wish writers wouldn't use similes, though, like a that . They're pointless wankery.

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Has anyone else read In Search of Lost Time? I've nearly finished The Guermantes Way and would love to talk about it.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Current Reading - Books best thread

WOM wrote:

Just finished Maus. Not exactly an enjoyable read, but definitely an essential one.

Agree completely. Immensely powerful.

Thirded. Even if you're indifferent to graphic novels you should read it.