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    #26
    Current Reading - Books best thread

    Ha, I read Market Forces too. Enjoyable guff, perfect for non-taxing summer holiday reading.

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      #27
      Current Reading - Books best thread

      Have you read any of his other stuff, Crusoe? I have Black Man lined up next.

      I liked the Takeshi Kovacs novels - Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. Intelligent action movie sci-fi is how I think of them.

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        #28
        Current Reading - Books best thread

        No, my dad gave me that one - let me know how they turn out. I'll look at the Kovacs ones as well.

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          #29
          Current Reading - Books best thread

          Just finished Understanding Comics - it's ace. I'm now debating whether to reduce my stack of unread novels, or head back into The Quest For Consciousness.

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            #30
            Current Reading - Books best thread

            I've just finished NonNonBâ, a BD by Shigeru Mizuki, about his childhood in a small village in 1930's Japan. It's full of supernatural elements and is quite moving in places.

            It's beautifully produced by Editions Cornelius. It reads Japanese-style, right-to-left and starting from the "back". You get used to it within a couple of pages.

            I also quite enjoyed Shenzhen and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle, about his trips to China and North Korea, where he worked as an animator. Nothing massively profound by way of observations, but I like his drawing style.

            That's comics for me for a bit, so, after ten years, I'm finally reading A Confederacy of Dunces again. It's such a delight to read.

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              #31
              Current Reading - Books best thread

              Pound's cantos, a guide to pound's Cantos, George Steiner's Grammars of Creation, two books by Simon Blackburn, and my thesis in excruciating detail...

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                #32
                Current Reading - Books best thread

                Currently splitting my time between:

                The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road To 9/11 by Lawrence Wright....does what it says on the tin. Cant recommend it enough, although I keep getting dragged away to read something else.

                and

                Conned by Matthew Klein.....A California con-man crime thriller.
                Its OK.

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                  #33
                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                  Recently finished novel: Wallace Stegner's Angle Of Repose. One of my favourite writers, and a beautiful book written (circa 1970) by an aging misanthrope in a wheelchair as he writes the novelised history of his own grandmother.

                  Recently finished 'I should really try and be a bit more intelligent about science and stuff' book: Simon Singh's Big Bang, which taught me that I didn't pay anything like enough attention to physics at school (I dreamt the other night my old teacher Mr Fox gave me a B+ when I told him I was reading Singh's book), and which has also made me start buying astronomy magazines and looking at expensive telescopes on the internet.

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                    #34
                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                    Just finished Gold by Dan Rhodes. Strange but likeable. The ending was not a complete surprise and lightened what could have been an otherwise sickly read, but even so the slightly sad aftertaste was a little unwelcome.

                    Now starting on Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque. I really enjoyed her first English translation (Out, which I only picked up because I liked the covers of the Vintage East editions) and this one seems to be going the same way of cold, clinical and slightly unnerving characters getting into unpleasant situations.

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                      #35
                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                      yeah, Burke's book is superb.

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                        #36
                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                        If you're into that (last 2 posts) I'd also recommend Voices of Resurgent Islam by John Esposito. Not the easiest book to get hold of but for a textbook it's very readable and it puts the thinking and actions of various factions of Islamism into context superbly. It was one of the recommended texts in my second year Political Islam course at uni (half of my degree was in religious studies), but I was the only person who actually managed to find a copy. If you can track it down it's worth a look.

                        And GO, are you mad? There's no such mood as 'not in the mood for books', there's only 'not in the mood for any of the unread books I currently own'. Go and buy a couple... have you read any Borges?

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                          #37
                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                          Ahem, sorry, a small correction to previous post: Voices... is EDITED by John Esposito.

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                            #38
                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                            Esposito's Islam: The Straight Path is very, very good, although not really (at all) concerned with modern geopolitics so much as religious history.

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                              #39
                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                              I've got three on the go at the moment...

                              Hamlet- I thought it was about time I read it.

                              Summerhill by A.S Neill- An account of the school of the same name. Odd in the extreme (the way it's written, not the philosophy), but very inspiring stuff.

                              Nietzsche- JP Stern- I've read a lot of Nietzshce, but not a lot of secondary stuff about him (normally it's vice versa with philosohy and me), so I thought I should read a quick intro. I think I get Nietzsche, but I'm never totally certain what the important bits are.

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                                #40
                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                I just finished reading Master of the Senate about Lyndon Johnson's rise to Majority Leader and pragmatic/quasi-ideological swing from a classic Southern Senator to the man who would end up passing the Great Society programs. One of the best books about American politics I've read.

                                Am starting Darkmans by Nicola Barker. I've heard great things about this, but am having a hard time getting engaged in the first 20 pages or so.

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                                  #41
                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                  I've just finished Richard Dawkins-The Ancestor's Tale which was good for someone who gave up biology at 14 (me not Professor Dawkins). The 100 pages in the middle with a succession of small, worm like creatures were a slog though. Currently reading too many books about the history of NHS IT systems for Uni. I think something light like Malcolm Pryce beckons next.

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                                    #42
                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                    Heh. No, Dawkins waited until twenty years ago to give up biology.

                                    FH - have you read Sebastian Barker's The Dream of Intelligence? it's an absolutely fucking brilliant exegesis of Nietzsche, as well as masterful poetry.

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                                      #43
                                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                                      Done with The Two Faces of Islam (an abortion of a book - avoid it). Am now moving on to Madawi Al-Rasheed's Contesting the Saudi State which I am sure will crush me through sheer boredom in about 48 hours.

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                                        #44
                                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                                        Darkmans as well, Gyuri? Truly a man of taste.

                                        Stick with it, it's fantastic.

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                                          #45
                                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                                          I just read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. It's excruciating, but brilliant. A great, tight little study of how the wrong reactions at the wrong moment can ruin your entire life.
                                          So yes, quite cheery.
                                          Just before that I finally got round to reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It was dazzling, but I think I need to read it again.

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                                            #46
                                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                                            mackstress wrote:
                                            Just before that I finally got round to reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. It was dazzling, but I think I need to read it again.
                                            That's pretty close to how I always feel after reading Calvino. I usually feel as if I've been dazzled, but I'm not exactly sure why.

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                                              #47
                                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                                              Agnes Grey which is really great. I didn't expect so much discussion of animal rights...

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                                                #48
                                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                I am now actually reading a book, which is a step forward.

                                                It's Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis.

                                                I'm not so far into it yet.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                  Oh I love Lindsey Davis, she's really brilliant. I hope you like it.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                    Her intro to this reissue is a bit up herself, but I'm hoping the book is better. It is so far.

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