Current Reading - Books best thread

[Sam]

Arf.

[ale]

I'm now reading 'Missing Fay' by Adam Thorpe, and it's excellent so far. Also, very unusual to read a novel set in Lincolnshire, mentioning villages and coastal resorts I know so well.

Have had an interest in that story for a while now without doing anything about it so your recommendation could be a timely push to attention. Have just finished Emily St John Mandel 'Glass Hotel' which enjoyed as much if not more than Station Eleven.

Am also finding Tony Fletcher Smiths saga 'A Light That Never Goes Out' much more engaging than expected. Certainly more than the Johnny Rogan biography.

[imp]

Have had an interest in that story for a while now without doing anything about it so your recommendation could be a timely push to attention.

I can see no reason why you wouldn't love it - I finished it yesterday and couldn't settle down to anything until it was done. I've got 'Ullerton' on my bookshelf waiting too, reputedly his classic. I also assumed that Thorpe either lived in Lincolnshire or had grown up there, but he lives in France and grew up in Wiltshire, France and Cameroon. He really nails Lincoln and the county, though.

[San Bernardhinault]

I know we've talked about moving on from the Current Reading thread, but I think I need to put this in here because the book seems too lightweight for a thread of its own.

Anyway, just finished reading a lovely little novel called Nothing To See Here, by Kevin Wilson. It feels lightweight, short, very easy to read. But I think it's much better than that. The conceit is fascinating - twins kids who sponatenously combust when they get agitated, who're being looked after by the narrator who is a misfit woman who never thought she'd have kids. It's basically about how she gets this connection with them and parenthood - her ersatz parenthood in comparison to all the real ones, I guess. And power dynamics and who protects the weak.

I think I'd really recommend it, and it won't take much of your effort or time to enjoy. My only criticism is that this is not the first time I've seen a new book set some time in the mid-90s as a narrative device to helpfully take the internet out of the picture.

[Sam]

Finished Girl, Woman, Other last night. Pure coincidence that I read it immediately after A Visit From the Goon Squad, because there are similarities in the way they're constructed: both made up of a series of chapters about different individuals that could pretty much stand on their own as short stories, both skip about through time (AVFTGS between about 1960 and the early 2020s, GWO between the mid-19th century and 2018ish) and both are held together, albeit loosely, by each character's connection with a figure who's central to the narrative (although this is rather more obvious in AVFTGS). I had no idea about any of this when I picked either of them up, so it was pure felicity that I read one after the other.

Tonight I'll start Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

[gt3]

Finished Dalrymple's The Anarchy last night. An astonishingly well researched book using sources that haven't been seen before. I have to admit until the story hit the late 18th/early 19th century, I found it hard going although the battle scenes and the mention of places I have been kept me going. The East India Company was the first company that was too big too fail and its rise and fall resonates not just with the financial collapse in 2008 but also the cronyism of today. The latter not something that Dalrymple could have foreseen.

Essential reading for anyone interested in how India got from being a vasselage of a private company to finally becoming part of The Raj.

[Sam]

I finished Piranesi the other night, and woke up the next day to read on Twitter that it had been longlisted for the Women's Prize. I know I've been saying this quite a bit lately (I've been lucky with the ones I've picked ... or maybe I'm just following very good people and places for recommendations) but it is such a good novel. Borges blended with Poe and a splash of really good mystery. It's gorgeous, and it makes me want to get hold of Clarke's other stuff forthwith.

I'm now about a quarter of the way through Natives by Akala. Having seen a few of his talks online it's pretty familiar ground so far, but it always bears repeating.

[ChrisJ]

Finished Dalrymple's The Anarchy last night. An astonishingly well researched book using sources that haven't been seen before. I have to admit until the story hit the late 18th/early 19th century, I found it hard going although the battle scenes and the mention of places I have been kept me going. The East India Company was the first company that was too big too fail and its rise and fall resonates not just with the financial collapse in 2008 but also the cronyism of today. The latter not something that Dalrymple could have foreseen.

Essential reading for anyone interested in how India got from being a vasselage of a private company to finally becoming part of The Raj.

I got this recently but having read the first chapter, I'm waiting for a holiday because like you I'm finding it brilliant but dense. Keeping track of the various characters can be tricky at times. Love WD, though. (I thought the book was written in the last couple of years, postdating the 2008 crash by quite a while?)

Instead I'm reading The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya by James Crowden. It's essentially a travel book set in 70's Ladakh, one of my favourite places in the world. I've already bought it for a friend's birthday and I'd highly reccomend, although that may be because of the resonance of the subject.

[RobW]

My brother's idea of a funny 40th birthday present. Meanwhile, i'm also reading Lucy Inglis' The Milk of Paradise about the history of opium, having finished Neil Gaiman's Norse Myths

[gt3]

I got this recently but having read the first chapter, I'm waiting for a holiday because like you I'm finding it brilliant but dense. Keeping track of the various characters can be tricky at times. Love WD, though. (I thought the book was written in the last couple of years, postdating the 2008 crash by quite a while?)

Instead I'm reading The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya by James Crowden. It's essentially a travel book set in 70's Ladakh, one of my favourite places in the world. I've already bought it for a friend's birthday and I'd highly reccomend, although that may be because of the resonance of the subject.

It was. The point I was making (clearly badly) was that whilst WD was writing with the 2008 crash in mind, it reflected the more recent cronyism as well, which WD of course wouldn't have foreseen - the ?37bn Track and Trace contract being exhibit A...

I love Ladakh. Was lucky enough to be in Leh on my 42nd birthday when the Dalai Lama was in town. I have a picture of him him waving at me from his car.

Will check out the book The Frozen River, thanks for the recommendation.

[ChrisJ]

It was. The point I was making (clearly badly) was that whilst WD was writing with the 2008 crash in mind, it reflected the more recent cronyism as well, which WD of course wouldn't have foreseen - the ?37bn Track and Trace contract being exhibit A...

I love Ladakh. Was lucky enough to be in Leh on my 42nd birthday when the Dalai Lama was in town. I have a picture of him him waving at me from his car.

Will check out the book The Frozen River, thanks for the recommendation.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry, I've not been at my sharpest in the last 36 hours since my vaccine side-effects kicked in!

Ladakh is great, isn't it? Hope you like the book.

[Sam]

Finished Natives on Monday or Tuesday. Annoyingly, I then had cause to look in my Amazon orders for something else and found there was an update available for it (Amazon make updated editions and whatnot available for free for some titles) only after I'd finished it. No details of what the update involved, though, so perhaps I'll check it out again at a later date; I'd certainly be up for reading an edition that takes events since this edition's publication (in I think 2018) into consideration.

I'm now reading LOTE by Shola von Reinhold, which is very interesting for the first act and is just starting to tip into really intriguing at the point I'm now at, about a quarter of the way in. It came to my attention through the publisher's TwentyIn2020 promotion, and I picked up another title or two from the list at the same time I bought this – very much looking forward to the others now!

[scratchmonkey]

Need to finish The Name of the Rose, was plowing through it before covid and got absolutely sidetracked from reading with my commute gone. I did smash through Trawler in under three days two weeks ago, so hopefully that puts me back on the train. Got quite a backlog to get through, including Piranesi.

[Diable Rouge]

Finally read American Dirt about three months after the rest of the world, and it really is a cynical case of "bestseller by numbers" - we'll make the protagonists middle-class, because if they were dirt poor the liberal soccer mom target readership would find it too difficult to truly relate to them, we'll also throw in some sanitised narco descriptions for colour, because they've seen El Chapo on Netflix, but some sob stories will add some "gritty realism" to the mix. They'll then talk to their fellow book club readers about how "harrowing" the whole novel was, but will still only pay Consuela $2 an hour for her services nannying their children or mowing the lawn.

[gt3]

Just been sent a copy of Nat Tate's biography. I love that Bowie was complicit in the hoax - https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...x-william-boyd

[nmrfox]

The latest (number 27!) of Peter Robinson's DCI Banks books arrived on my kindle at the beginning of last week. Unlike the truly dreadful TV series, which bore about as much resemblance to the books as I do to Zaphod Beeblebrox, the books had been slowly declining in standard of storyline and authenticity, especially compared to the earlier books in the series. However, much to my surprise Not Dark Yet was interesting, intriguing and suspenseful and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Not sure how much more Robinson can wring out of the series, but if he stops here it will be a fine end.

[Tony C]

About 80 pages in I’m really enjoying Ben Lerner’s ‘Leaving The Atocha Station’. His central character is a real paradox - a likeable charlatan, a writer who hates writers and writing - and the Madrid settings remind me of a happy couple of years spent there, just a short walk from Atocha.

[Sam]

I finished LOTE last night. Fascinating book, and really hard to categorise. It's part sort of detective fiction, part meditation on institutional power and the ways in which it marginalises or entirely mutes non-cis/het/white voices. I look forward to seeing what von Reinhold does next. This wasn't my favourite book of the last year or so, but it's certainly the most unique, and I did really like it.

I felt like some more fiction to follow it up so, for a quick page-turner to refresh the palate so to speak, I've just started re-reading Treasure Island.

[Sam]

Treasure Island remains very enjoyable (if slightly less faithful to the Muppets' original than I remembered).

I shall shortly be starting Through the Leopard's Gaze by Njambi McGrath.

[imp]

Common People by Philip Callow, acclaimed as one of the great post-war working class novels. The opening chapters are strong, and read more like a memoir. The narrator, though, an aspiring artist, ends up leaving you cold due to being a bit of a supercilious twot, basically, who ends up doing nothing more than going to London from his native Birmingham and wondering around doing fuck all. Less Angry Young Man, just an irritating one. It was one of Callow's earliest novels, and I've never read anything else by him so I don't know if he got any better.

[Snake Plissken]

Following an interview with JJ Swartwelder, wirter of 59 Simpsons episodes, I discovered he has written a whole bunch of books about a sort of comedy private eye in a Raymond Chandler mould. I dived into The Time Machine Made Me Do It and it is very funny, and odd and daft. The central character is basically Homer Simpson trying to be Sam Spade, completely oblivious to the obvious things all around him. It could be an acquired taste as it exists in a world more like a cartoon, where narrative and character consistency can be dropped instantly in favour of a quick gag but you are never more than a coupe of pages away from a gem of a gag. ("My office wall had a sign with motivational advice on it - "YOU CAN ALWAYS DO IT TOMORROW!!!". It was on sale with a whole bunch of similar quotes. But this one was half price. Because it was bad advice.")

[Sam]

I finished Through the Leopard's Gaze last night. Only realised about two thirds of the way in that it's a memoir rather than a novel. Frequently harrowing, but really glad I read it.

Tonight I'm starting Jazz by Tony Morrison.

[gt3]

ChrisJ Oh my word. The Frozen River is excellent. Especially the return up the river and the solo ski-ing section. The way he conjures up the people of the region, the sights, sounds, smell...It read like a prose poem at times. Thanks for the recommendation.

[ChrisJ]

ChrisJ Oh my word. The Frozen River is excellent. Especially the return up the river and the solo ski-ing section. The way he conjures up the people of the region, the sights, sounds, smell...It read like a prose poem at times. Thanks for the recommendation.

Glad you liked it. I hadn't quite finished it when I posted, but I was so keen to share. Then for the rest of the book I was dreading turning the page and coming across a screed of 'white bloke goes spiritual in the mystic east' stuff and embarrassing myself! (Am I thinking of Andrew Harvey here?) But he held it together I thought, and the ski journey was great wasn't it? Akin to some of the good climbing/mountaineering yarns.

[gt3]

ChrisJ The ski journey was up there with the descent sequence of Herzog's Annapurna and the Gerrard-Cherry Worst Journey. I know it was shorter but the physical toil and metal toll...and having been in the region, and been trekking in Nepal, I was able to conjure up the scenery and sense of isolation. Again, thank you.