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    Jesus man, did you lose a bet?

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      Ho ho. No, I've been on a non-fiction binge so having something fluffier to read was a nice break.

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        Originally posted by RobW View Post
        ...have Neil Gaiman's recent book Norse Mythology as well ...
        Spotted this on Mrs WOM's night table this week. I was like "Hey....someone else I know is reading this...<stares off into middle distance>...".

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          Originally posted by Crusoe View Post
          Ho ho. No, I've been on a non-fiction binge so having something fluffier to read was a nice break.
          The Road would make a nice palate cleanser...

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            Hmm. I guess there is a bit of a post-apocalyptic theme going on.

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              I’ve just finished Eleanor Oliphant, the current bestseller, list topper etc. Was almost put off by it being bestselling chicklit but it’s fantastic. Clever, funny and painful. A bit triggering for me, as I had an awful mother who still stalks my dreams, although not as bad as Eleanor’s.

              The funny bits are really, really funny.

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                Recently finished 'The Goldfinch' which was nice an' all, but I am slightly surprised by how lauded it was. Back reading non-fiction for the moment and started Simon Sebag Montefiore's tome on the Romanovs. Might take me a while to get through it too.

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                  Last week I went to the Jack London State Historic Park. I'd never read any Jack London, and didn't know anything about him, but this magnificent place changed all that - I can only urge you to go if you happen to be in northern California. I bought 'The Star Rover', because it looked a bit different from everything else he'd written. And it's the kind of book that makes you wonder how you've never heard of it - either it's wholly under-rated (it wasn't that well received by the critics when it was published, and didn't sell as well as his adventure stories), or it flew under my radar my whole life long. Apparently he didn't even like writing - viewed it as a chore so that he could be a farmer from the royalties, getting up at 5.30am every morning (which must have been tough given he was an alcoholic) to write his word quota. He'd write letters to his publisher requesting larger advances because he'd just brought several thousand eucalyptus trees, or was planning to build a palace for his pigs. Must try that sometime.

                  Edit: a quick OTF search reveals that Amor de Cosmos has it on his list of Books to Read in your Lifetime at number 118. Good man!
                  Last edited by imp; 18-10-2018, 12:34.

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                    Eh?

                    Oh, right! I know it as The Jacket which, I'm guessing, was it's British title. JL was a fascinating character, the kind of person who makes you think you've just been kicking your heels for seventy years.

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                      Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                      I've started reading Sabriel. It's years since I've read it.
                      I got stuck on this so gave up. I find it hard to read something I read before which I really enjoyed but now realise isn't that good.

                      A while back I picked up a set of Iain Banks books at a charity fair. I started reading A Song of Stone last night and really enjoyed the first two chapters. So that's my current reading now.

                      Re Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. I was a bit disappointed with that. I'm not sure why it disappointed me, perhaps because I wanted something more detailed. He wrote very sparse versions of the myths. However, I subsequently read the 500 page extended version of American Gods, which is much better imo.

                      However, an absolutely brilliant modern rendering of the Norse myths is Raganarok by A.S. Byatt. Utterly compelling and a chilling application to our current situation on the brink of global destruction. And quite possibly another reason why I didn't go a bundle on the Gaiman book.

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                        Just finished "Contact" by Carl Sagan, of the same movie.

                        Book is very different, and better by a factor of infinity. I absolutely loved it, and fittingly, finished it in a cafe just as the sun came up.

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                          Sharon Rooney, anyone?

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                            Don't you mean Sally Rooney?

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                              My mum just sent me a copy of her book. I'll give it a read in the next week or two and let you know what I think.

                              Right now I'm finally reading Sideways, which is much less well written than the movie, but still quite entertaining.

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                                I do mean Sally Rooney, yes. Sorry, Perou. Inspired by the review in the LRB of the latest I bought “Conversation with Friends“ Imagine being able to write like that at twenty five.

                                Here she is on the abortion Referendum


                                I was born in 1991, the same year a Virgin Megastore in Dublin was raided for selling condoms without a pharmacist present. Two years before the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Four years before the legalisation of divorce. Twenty-seven years, I can only hope, before the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.
                                Last edited by Nefertiti2; 26-10-2018, 17:19.

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                                  I've finally got around to reading Bring Up the Bodies, to try and get it in before the last of Mantell's Cromwell trilogy is published (currently due next year). My non-revelation is that it's very good. Actually, I'm finding it a much easier read than I did Wolf Hall.

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                                    I've just finished “Exterminate All the Brutes” and for such a short book, written in sub page length chapters, it does meander more than I was expecting. But it knows where it is heading and it's worth it.

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                                      I read it- astonishing.

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                                        Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                        I do mean Sally Rooney, yes. Sorry, Perou. Inspired by the review in the LRB of the latest I bought “Conversation with Friends“ Imagine being able to write like that at twenty five.

                                        Here she is on the abortion Referendum
                                        She’s on my to-read list, possibly straight after the novel I’ve just started, Jonathan Coe’s The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, an intelligent Millennial I know heartily recommended it to me last month. So far (60 pages in), very pleasant and quietly thought-provoking. I like the character of Maxwell Sim more than the way his story is told (a little plodding IMO) but it does manage to grab you.

                                        Good text on the abortion ref (the NYT on Savita Halappanavar).

                                        I remember Ireland in the late 1980s as I used to go there a lot (had friends in Dublin, Donegal and County Kildare and also NI) and yeah, it was pretty religious. Many of my non-churchy 18-24 y-old friends outside of Dublin were made to go to Sunday morning mass while I had a kip (I declined the invitation to accompany them). In another thread, I remember telling Lang Spoon that one of them was renting a nice and reasonably spacious bedsit in Dublin 6 for £10 a week. However, he worked in a shoe shop near Halfpenny Bridge for the summer holidays for £1 an hour (no hourly minimum wage in Ireland then, like in England). In other words, a very different planet from today.

                                        I haven’t read anything from Sally Rooney but I think I’ll start with Conversations with Friends (Her debut Conversations With Friends saw her hailed as ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’).

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                                          Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                                          She’s on my to-read list, possibly straight after the novel I’ve just started, Jonathan Coe’s The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, an intelligent Millennial I know heartily recommended it to me last month. So far (60 pages in), very pleasant and quietly thought-provoking. I like the character of Maxwell Sim more than the way his story is told (a little plodding IMO) but it does manage to grab you.

                                          Good text on the abortion ref (the NYT on Savita Halappanavar).

                                          I remember Ireland in the late 1980s as I used to go there a lot (had friends in Dublin, Donegal and County Kildare and also NI) and yeah, it was pretty religious. Many of my non-churchy 18-24 y-old friends outside of Dublin were made to go to Sunday morning mass while I had a kip (I declined the invitation to accompany them). In another thread, I remember telling Lang Spoon that one of them was renting a nice and reasonably spacious bedsit in Dublin 6 for £10 a week. However, he worked in a shoe shop near Halfpenny Bridge for the summer holidays for £1 an hour (no hourly minimum wage in Ireland then, like in England). In other words, a very different planet from today.

                                          I haven’t read anything from Sally Rooney but I think I’ll start with Conversations with Friends (Her debut Conversations With Friends saw her hailed as ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’).
                                          She's better than that.

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                                            Originally posted by Levin View Post
                                            I've just finished “Exterminate All the Brutes” and for such a short book, written in sub page length chapters, it does meander more than I was expecting. But it knows where it is heading and it's worth it.
                                            Yes, it's really incredibly good. As an antidote to Lindqvist's somewhat rose-tinted views on Conrad, I'd recommend Chinua Achebe's An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

                                            Have you read any of Lindqvist's other stuff? A History of Bombing follows a similarly meandering path - interweaving genocidal fantasies of early twentieth century sci-fi with the genocidal realities that was (and is) aerial bombardment.

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                                              Recently finished pretty-much chain reading NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy which is probably the best SFF work I've ever read.

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                                                Carrying on my shipwreck / stranding theme, just finished Robinson Crusoe. Yes, yes, I should have read it already, but I haven't, so there.

                                                Anyway, as 'epic' and 'classic' as you could hope. My only criticisms: in some parts, he breezes through massive chunks of incredible happenings in just a few pages and, in other parts, he grinds on for pages and pages of utter mundanity. Yes, of course, it's to show the compression of time in exciting events and the stretching out of time in mundane events, but jeebus.

                                                Also, the God stuff. Clearly a deeply religious author, he bangs on for pages about He and Him and His designs, oh great Lord, etc etc. A nice editing down of that business would go a long way.

                                                Anyway, time well spend and I can assure you we'll be hearing more from the Defoe fellow.

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                                                  I finished The Underground Railroad on holiday, and read all of a slim volume (about 110 pages) called Cabot and Bristol's Age of Discovery by Evan T. Jones and Margaret M. Condon, which was very interesting, and am now reading The Race To The New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a Lost History of Discovery by Douglas Hunter, which takes some of the research done by Jones and Condon, and quite a lot of Hunter's own research, and brings it all together and is fascinating. It's also rather entertainingly written, and makes apparent how once we start to dig beyond the very basics of Columbus's and Cabot's lives, there were some remarkable parallels between them, not least of which the fact they were both basically chancers who got lucky (or unlucky, given they both failed quite spectacularly at what they were actually trying to do, and Columbus in particular went to his grave refusing to accept that the land he'd found wasn't the far east, even though plenty of people in the Spain of the time worked out it couldn't possibly be even before he embarked on his second voyage).

                                                  Seriously, the Jones and Condon book is probably only going to be of interest if you're particularly interested in the Bristol voyages, but I highly recommend the Hunter book even if you don't think you're at all interested in the Age of Discovery. It's just cracking.

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                                                    Just bought October by China Mieville. Hope I finish it, haven’t got through a whole book in too long.
                                                    Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-11-2018, 23:41.

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