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    My Vonnegut reading happened in my more SF-nerdy days as a late teenager. As such, I loved Cats Cradle most. Player Piano and Sirens of Titan (and of course S-5) were the others I really remember enjoying. Actually, I also loved Galapagos at the time, which is late-era Vonnegut, because I was going through a phase of fascination with Darwinism and evolution; I'm not sure anyone else read it.

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      I really liked Breakfast of Champs, not that I can remember anything much about it.

      I loved Slaughterhouse 5 so much I bought it (and 100 Years of Solitude!) for my Dad's xmas at the end of my 1st term at Wolverhampton poly.

      I still get cold sweats of embarassment at having done that (he was not renowned as a reader, even if he did a mean crossword), but when I once told it as a 'things you regret' in a group training session, I got lots of 'awww, how sweets'

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        Nice. My dad was a voracious reader, so I intentionally left a well-placed copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where I knew he'd pick it up. I received a profanity-laced phone call about two days later.

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          I’ve read Galapagos. Like Gore Vidal’s Live at Golgotha, I managed to enjoy it while also thinking it a bit shit. I don’t think I like Vonnegut’s prose style much at all. Like William Goldman (Adventures in screenwriting as well as his screenplays), I’m not sure if he’s a bad good writer or a good bad one. Mother Knight was great.
          Last edited by Lang Spoon; 30-05-2018, 21:10.

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            The first 250 pages of Timothy Snyder's "Road to Unfreedom" - which is mostly about Putin's post-2012 ideological changes - are the best thing I have read all year. It is mindblowing. It is the absolutely 100% perfect complement to Masha Gessen's "The Future is History", partly because it gives a better insight into what is going on behind the scenes (specifically, the thinking behind the demonization of homosexuality, as well as a clarification on the peculiarly Russian definition of the word "fascism" - essentially, anyone who gets in Russia's way or believes in the rule of law) and partly because his notion of "the politics of eternity", though not exactly well-fleshed out, still is a better description of the driving force of Putinism than the "totalitarianism" definition Gessen uses.

            The last 50 pages, which are about Trump, aren't bad, but they aren't great, either. Nothing factually incorrect, but they have the feel of a press-clipping dump.

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              Just finished Natives - Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, by Akala. As someone who grew up with a white Protestant British understanding of history, taught by white Protestant British teachers, I was always confused why the bad guys in films were always British (English, posh). It was only my own reading later in life that made it clear. It's because we were the bad guys.

              This book puts race and class into stark context. How they intertwine, and how Empire has created structures that still exist today. I've loved Akala since he thoughtfully destroyed Tommy Robinson on some YouTube clip I stumbled across while looking for a video the EDL meff getting slapped daft in Amsterdam. This book is a 300 odd page musing on how history and politics have effected primarily his life, and those of black and minority groups in England and beyond. It taught me a lot, and allowed me to streamline and sharpen my own thoughts on the subject. It's fucking great. Down with the whites! Down with the upper classes! Up with dead good books!

              4.5 white supremacists getting kicked up the hoop out of 5.

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                He's great- Will he be at the World Cup event?

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                  We're working on something to bring him to Manchester, but sadly not to the pub. You'll have to make do with Brian McClair.

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                    I've finished The Vital Question by Nick Lane, which is easily the most technical science book I've read. I managed to follow it though. It describes how complex cells first formed and how energy needs subsequently guided evolution. Very interesting.

                    In an abrupt change of pace, I've just started Clariel by Garth Nix, which is a prequel to the Old Kingdom trilogy that I read years ago. It's a young adult fantasy novel. Sometimes I just want to read something light.

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                      Originally posted by WOM View Post
                      Oh, good. I was wondering what to do next. I'd heard Breakfast of Champions. Any thoughts?
                      I bought it in a charity shop last year, read it, thought it was garbage and redistributed it to another charity shop immediately.

                      It's completely put me off reading anything else by him.

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                        Just finished Beartown, by Frederik Backman, and the universality of the themes explored made it a thoroughly rewarding read. Ostensibly, it's about a Swedish ice-hockey village, but the plot could easily be transferred to rural Ireland, Middle America or an English suburb and prove equally effective, dealing as it does with the rivalry between villages and towns, teenage friendships, community divisions faced with a polarising incident, exploration of perceived gender roles, and character development. The novel is reportedly going to be made into a TV series by the producers of The Bridge, and as one reads the book, it certainly appears tailor-made for such treatment.

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                          I'm reading 'Arcadia' by Jim Crace. He's the kind of writer whose every last sentence fills me with envious admiration. He's a proper writer, which sounds a banal thing to say, but what I mean is that he should be acclaimed as a literary titan for the things he does with words, page after page. There aren't many who can write like this. Richard Bass and Annie Proulx spring to mind. I read 'Being Dead' and 'Quarantine' by Crace a while back. But you don't hear much about him (not that I move in the kind of circles where people talk about this kind of thing). Anyone else read him?

                          Before that I finished 'Der Jonas-Komplex' by my favourite Austrian writer, the truly mental Thomas Glavinic. 750 pages, but it was a breeze, even if there was a mountain or two of cocaine more than necessary. Funny, excessive, ultimately humane.

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                            I read Being Dead a couple of years ago, yes- was impressed.

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                              Prompted by the absolutely awesome TV series 'Patrick Melrose', starring Benedict Cumberbatch (it's the best thing he's ever done, honestly), I'm currently coming to the end of the set of five semi-autobiographical novels by Edward St. Aubyn. They are fantastically well-written and incredibly caustic, with occasional dark sparks of vicious humour. I searched around to see whether anyone had previously mentioned him - either in books or film/TV - but couldn't find any reference.

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                                You've not listened to Cabin Pressure then...

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                                  Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                                  You've not listened to Cabin Pressure then...
                                  Yes I have. He's better in this.

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                                    Off-forum tangent, but I love Cabin Pressure. The chap who wrote it has a pretty good sketch show as well.

                                    Edit: oh, it's being discussed in the Current Watching thread. Naturally.
                                    Last edited by Crusoe; 14-06-2018, 13:28.

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                                      'One Life' by David Lida, a fictional take on Mexicans and death penalty from a writer working in that field.

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                                        Originally posted by WOM View Post
                                        Excellent. Thanks gents. Some egghead has a blog where he tells you which five books to start with, and then the next five, and some also-rans. I'll pick around. I've ordered Player Piano.
                                        How was or is it? Do I need to be sending you the money for it as promised?

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                                          I've finished Clariel. But now I feel I should re-read the other Old Kingdom books.

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                                            Originally posted by Antepli Ejderha View Post
                                            How was or is it? Do I need to be sending you the money for it as promised?
                                            Ah. I got knocked off course by Tom Wolfe dying and read The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, and then Mrs WOM bought me a true-crime book about Iceland called Out of Thin Air so I read that and then something else (looks around pile...) and now I'm into Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (which is excellent), and then I'll get back on course. Oh, the book about John Fairfax rowing solo across the Atlantic, which was interesting...but it went pretty smoothly, all things considered, so not terribly exciting.

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                                              I've started reading Sabriel. It's years since I've read it.

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                                                Just finished "1983 the world at the brink " by Taylor Downing, one of the scariest books I've ever read. In 1983 a series of misjudgements by the West accompanied by growing paranoia among the elderly Soviet politburo meant that the world came closer to Armageddon than at any other time before or since, I was 19 in 1983 and the thought of what could've happened gives me cold sweats even now

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                                                  Bought four books relating to Norse myths yesterday (on the basis that I watched Thor on Monday night). Started with The Penguin Guide to Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, have Neil Gaiman's recent book Norse Mythology as well as The Poetic Edda and The Prose Edda. Gone a bit overboard really.
                                                  Recently finished Ian Kershaw's History of Europe from 1914-1949, whereupon I realised I had read it two years ago. Really should hand it back to my dad, anyway it's a good read. Read Reservoir 13 too, which has got an awful lot of praise but I found it tiresome, trite and a complete bore. It reminded me of having to listen to The Archers omnibus.

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                                                    Recent reading that I've enjoyed:

                                                    Hannu Rajaniemi, Summerland - I guess scifi, but it's set in the late 1930s in a world where the British Empire colonised the afterlife and the Soviets turned to computers. British and Soviet spies duel in the living world and the afterlife over the fate of Spain, Stalin and possibly the world. Le Carre meets ectopunk.

                                                    Todd McAulty, The Robots of Gotham - entertaining scifi action. Unlikely hero businessman faces off against rogue AIs and a nascent pandemic in a war-torn US occupied by South American soldiers in a world semi-ruled by AIs.

                                                    C Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust - similar vein. Sort-of western where a mortally wounded scavenging robot seeks salvation in a ruined world after a robot uprising wiped out humanity.

                                                    Alma Katsu, The Hunger - dramatised account of the Donner Party (the wagon train to California that ended in starvation, murder and cannibalism). Real characters fleshed out with fictional details, and some added supernatural horror. A bit clunky in places, but compelling.

                                                    Peng Shepherd, The Book of M - currently working through this; the story of a man and wife separated in a post-apocalyptic America where a global pandemic resulted first in people losing their shadows, then their memories, but gaining weird powers as a result (e.g. a character forgets that wolves can't talk, so they can). Less silly than it sounds.

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